Month: November 2016

​FORMER General Secretary of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG, Chief Frank Kokori, has lambasted Chief Tony Anenih over his comments that he advised Chief M.K.O Abiola not to declare himself President, which the late business mogul did not heed.

Chief Anenih was the national chairman of the defunct Social Democratic Party, SDP, the platform with which the late Abiola, presumably, won the June 12, 1993 presidential election. Abiola died in detention in July 1998. He was arrested after he declared himself as president.

The Kokori-led NUPENG played crucial roles in the series of June 12 protests to actualise Abiola’s mandate.

In his autobiography entitled: My Life and Nigeria Politics, Anenih, 83, among others, said he wished Abiola listened to his advice against declaring himself president because “if he did, I believe he would, in all probability, still have been alive today.”

Reacting to this statement, Kokori told Vanguard on phone, yesterday: “I read the statement by Anenih and that was correct, even myself, who was a key player then was not told by Abiola. He never told me that he was going to declare himself President.

“But that does not hide the fact that Anenih as chairman of the defunct Social Democratic Party, SDP, which Abiola belonged to, betrayed Abiola and the June 12 struggle.

“Anenih scuttled June 12 and incapacitated the struggle for the actualisation of Abiola’s mandate. It was natural that Abiola declared himself President because he won the election and had the mandate of Nigerians to be President.

I have no reason to doubt Anenih — Zwingina

However, former associate and campaign manager of Chief MKO Abiola, Senator Zwingina, said he had no reason to doubt the statement credited to Chief Anenih.

“I believe some of those advice were given at close quarters, maybe when Anenih visited him. However, I cannot say much about it because I was not present at the meeting and it is difficult to corroborate unless someone was with them when the discussion took place. I have no reason to doubt Chief Anenih on his statement in his book.”

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder as they say, however, every man should know the difference between a chaft and a grain, when it comes to selecting ladies as life-long partner.

The high rate at which ladies nowadays paint their face with all sorts of heavy makeups is alarming! Out of 10 ladies, it’s going to be very difficult to get three who go about in light makeup or even wear no makeup at all.

These heavily-makeup-laden-face ladies are in their thousands on the streets of Nigeria as well as other countries. They are now the movers and shakers of the society called uptown girls.

A good number of men can’t distinguish between natural beauty and artificial beauty. When they see a lady with eccentric eyelashes or who wears heavy foundation to cover up her ugly face, they easily fall for her.

Even, it is believed by some smart guys that these categories of ladies now use these heavy makeups to deceive unsuspecting men who are ready to make them as their legally married wives.

A few weeks ago, some newspapers reported a story about the unexpected termination of a few days old marriage by the newly married husband while he was on honeymoon.

It was during the honeymoon the man saw the natural face of his new wife. He was astounded by seeing the lady having tribal marks, one each on her two cheeks. Likewise, the woman employed a professional makeup artist to cover the tribal marks and her ugly face prior to when the man met her. She had deceived the man to marrying her.

It should be known that the foundation of a fruitful marital life is the unalloyed trust between the man and the woman. There should be no modicum of deceit either from both parties. Therefore, if ladies continue to use makeup to deceive men to marrying them, if crevices and cracks start revealing early after their marriage, they have nobody to blame but themselves.

Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN), the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate at the Saturday, November 26 Ondo state election has been declared winner on Sunday, November 27 by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The initial battle for the Government House at Akure was thought to be an easy one for the state ruling party candidate, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s candidate Eyitayo Jegede. However, the story turned out differently, as Akeredolu came first, with Jegede coming a distance second. While Wale Oke of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) settled for the third position.

A good number of political watchers had thought the incumbency factor of Governor Olusegun Mimiko will do the job for Jegede. On the other hand, the APC dealt this a blow, as Akeredolu, a former national president of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) carried the day. As they say, the rest is history.

Southwest Nigeria is made of Lagos, Ogun, Osun, Oyo, Ondo and Ekiti states. After the swearing in of the one time NBA national president, only Ekiti state will be a PDP state, with the remaining five states governed by APC governors.

The APC tsunami that has just hit Ondo state may likewise take over Ekiti when current governor Ayodele Fayose completes his term in a few years time.

Former President Fidel Castro, who led a rebel army to improbable victory in Cuba, embraced Soviet-style communism and defied the power of 10 U.S. presidents during his half century rule, has died at age 90.
With a shaking voice, President Raul Castro said on state television that his older brother died at 10:29 p.m. Friday. He ended the announcement by shouting the revolutionary slogan: “Toward victory, always!”

Castro’s reign over the island-nation 90 miles (145 kilometers) from Florida was marked by the U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. The bearded revolutionary, who survived a crippling U.S. trade embargo as well as dozens, possibly hundreds, of assassination plots, died 10 years after ill health forced him to hand power over to Raul.
Castro overcame imprisonment at the hands of dictator Fulgencio Batista, exile in Mexico and a disastrous start to his rebellion before triumphantly riding into Havana in January 1959 to become, at age 32, the youngest leader in Latin America. For decades, he served as an inspiration and source of support to revolutionaries from Latin America to Africa.
His commitment to socialism was unwavering, though his power finally began to fade in mid-2006 when a gastro-intestinal ailment forced him to hand over the presidency to Raul in 2008, provisionally at first and then permanently. His defiant image lingered long after he gave up his trademark Cohiba cigars for health reasons and his tall frame grew stooped.
“Socialism or death” remained Castro’s rallying cry even as Western-style democracy swept the globe and other communist regimes in China and Vietnam embraced capitalism, leaving this island of 11 million people an economically crippled Marxist curiosity.
He survived long enough to see Raul Castro negotiate an opening with U.S. President Barack Obama on Dec. 17, 2014, when Washington and Havana announced they would move to restore diplomatic ties for the first time since they were severed in 1961. He cautiously blessed the historic deal with his lifelong enemy in a letter published after a month-long silence. Obama made a historic visit to Havana in March, this year.
Carlos Rodriguez, 15, was sitting in Havana’s Miramar neighborhood when he heard that Fidel Castro had died.Fidel Castro Ruiz
“Fidel? Fidel?” he said, slapping his head in shock. “That’s not what I was expecting. One always thought that he would last forever. It doesn’t seem true.”

“It’s a tragedy,” said 22-year-old nurse Dayan Montalvo. “We all grew up with him. I feel really hurt by the news that we just heard.”
Fidel Castro Ruz was born August 13, 1926, in eastern Cuba’s sugar country, where his Spanish immigrant father worked first recruiting labour for U.S. sugar companies and later built up a prosperous plantation of his own.
Castro attended Jesuit schools, then the University of Havana, where he received law and social science degrees. His life as a rebel began in 1953 with a reckless attack on the Moncada military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago. Most of his comrades were killed and Fidel and his brother Raul went to prison.
Fidel turned his trial defense into a manifesto that he smuggled out of jail, famously declaring, “History will absolve me.”
Freed under a pardon, Castro fled to Mexico and organized a rebel band that returned in 1956, sailing across the Gulf of Mexico to Cuba on a yacht named Granma. After losing most of his group in a bungled landing, he rallied support in Cuba’s eastern Sierra Maestra mountains.
Three years later, tens of thousands spilled into the streets of Havana to celebrate Batista’s downfall and catch a glimpse of Castro as his rebel caravan arrived in the capital on January 8, 1959.
The U.S. was among the first to formally recognize his government, cautiously trusting Castro’s early assurances he merely wanted to restore democracy.
From Vanguard

​PERHAPS some people may not find this mind-blowing given that Nigerians have become accustomed to hearing about outrageous looting of the nation’s treasury by public officials.

But many would appreciate that even with the falling value of Nigeria’s currency, N450 million could save lives in the health sector where government hospitals in the country lack many equipment.

Recovered looted vehicles

Some of the vehicles after their recovery at ICPC premises at the weekend
The quantum of money in question, if deployed in fixing the collapsed portions of the Benin/Ore Highway, could as well reduce the alarming rate of auto crashes on that road.

However, the systemic nature of corruption in the country ensured that the money, instead of being expended on common good, was used to purchase exotic vehicles and then converted to personal properties by some top public officials.

The discovery came to light in the course of an investigation by Sunday Vanguard into the activities of the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, ICPC.

The manner in which the misappropriation took place offers insight into how undermining some public officials had been to the Nigerian story.

Some top officials of Ministries, Departments and Agencies,MDAs, were discovered to be chiefly involved in the matter.

Specifically, those affected were of the Ministries of Water Resources, Labour, Environment,Information and Health, Federal Road Maintenance Agency, FERMA, and Subsidy Reinvestment Programme, SURE-P.

Findings revealed that funds set aside by the SURE-P for execution of projects were used to procure vehicles by the MDAs.

Meanwhile, the vehicles were supposed to have been recorded as part of the properties of the MDAs in line with the procurement rules of the civil service.

It was also learnt that since the funds did not emanate from the budgetary allocation of the concerned MDAs, not recording the purchase of the 103 vehicles facilitated the appropriation by the officials.

The beneficiaries of the fraud were found to have been assisted by SURE-P contractors and officials of the agency in charge of some projects.

A breakdown of the vehicles taken and later recovered indicated that they were mainly Sports Utility Vehicles, SUVs, including Toyota Land Cruiser, Audi A6, AudiQ8, Nissan Armada and Ford Edge, Toyota Hillux and Rav4.

There were also various units of Peugeot 508, Toyota Avensis and Toyota Corolla, among others.

To ensure that the vehicles were not documented as government properties, Sunday Vanguard learnt that they were not registered in government name but in the names of the top officials who later appropriated them.

While some of the vehicles were taken away during the last dispensation, others disappeared when President Muhammadu Buhari said he was winding up the now defunct SURE-P.

If the action was irritating, the manner it was penetrated could be termed outrageous and unpatriotic.

No fewer than 13 vehicles worth N55.5million were allegedly made away with by a senior official of the Water Quality Control Department of the Federal Ministry of Water Resources (names withheld).

He was alleged to have taken two Prado jeeps, three Toyota Avensis cars, two Rav 4 jeeps and three Toyota Hilux vans.

Further investigation revealed that in the same ministry, a former Director, Irrigation and Drainage (now retired), allegedly, took four vehicles, including a Toyota Land Cruiser, an Audi A6, Nissan Armada and Ford Edge, all SUVs, worth N28 million.

An Audi Q7 and a Hilux van were also allegedly recovered from a former Director of Dams in the department.

Another startling recovery was said to have been made in March 2016 from SURE: A former official took away a bullet proof Toyota Land Cruiser jeep worth N36 million which has now been recovered from him.

It was further gathered that a retired director in the Water Quality and Control Department was said to have been taken home a Prado jeep, a Toyota Hilux van and Toyota Corolla car.

* President Muhammadu Buhari is piloting the affairs of Nigeria for the second time after first leading the nation as a military ruler between December, 1983 and August, 1985 before he was ousted in a palace military coup

* Northern Nigerian born military men and politicians alike have ruled the country more than any other region, as they hold the mentality that they were born to rule!

* Power is sweet as they say and this may not be unconnected with some whisperings and possibly loud voices yearning for former vice president Atiku Abubakar to throw his hat into the ring come the main election in 2019

Politics is filled with landmines and unseen circumstances that could lead a green horn to go to political oblivion and obscurity very early. More so, one of the key words in democracy is “political subterfuge.”

President Muhammadu Buhari in a warm handshake with former vice president Atiku Abubakar

It is always very difficult often times to determine where the pendulum will swing to when it comes to political predictions. As they say, 2+2 is not equal to 4 in politics.

Some adherent supporters of incumbent president Muhammadu Buhari are saying, come rain, come sunshine, he is the only one they want to return in three years from this year. On the other hand, die-hard followings of Atiku Abubakar are saying he is the only one who can remove Nigeria from its current economic quagmire.

A recent online report even stated that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has started drumming support for the “Turakin Adamawa.”

Below are the four issues that could bring up a Buhari Vs Atiku contest in 2019:

1. Voices of supporters

Fans of both Buhari and Atiku will never relent at telling both men they need to contest. In addition, these two political heavyweights will want to listen to these voices.

2. Power is enticing

According to some former personal advisers of past presidents and Heads of State who have tasted power, they said serving a single tenure is never in the dictionary of any leader. They cited former president Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who wanted a third term tenure as well as Dr Goodluck Jonathan who wanted to return after saying initially he will serve a single term.

3. Atiku’s unending urge to lead Nigeria

Former vice president Atiku Abubakar who clocked 70 years on planet earth on Friday, November 25 has never hidden his uncommon zeal to rule the nation. It should be recalled he started his mission since early 1990s when he contested as one of the presidential candidates during the Social Democratic Party (SDP) primaries where he came third behind Chief MKO Abiola and Ambassador Babagana Kingibe.

In addition, when he finished serving his eight years as vice president in 2007, he contested again but lost also. He has tried his luck severally, yet he hasn’t hit the bull’s eye!

4. Dominance over others

A politician is only relevant when he controls the political structures of his party. This is best done when he leads as a governor in a state or rules as the number one citizen in the country.

For instance, there is no dispute to the fact that president Muhammadu Buhari controls the All Progressives Congress (APC) machineries whether someone agrees or disagrees. Likewise he is the most important person in Nigeria.

Due to this, Atiku will still want to try if he could hit the jackpot as he will be so much interested in controlling the political structures of the APC.

Time will eventually tell at the end of the day who will lead the country in 2019.